


that glimmer of hope (you shut it down)

by 3minswriting



Category: NU'EST
Genre: Alternate Universe, Friends to Lovers, Future, M/M, Porn with Feelings, bottom baekho, chaebol!au, top minhyun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-24 04:41:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30066825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3minswriting/pseuds/3minswriting
Summary: It’s another one of those nights, the kind that Minhyun knows he’s going to regret later when they wake up.
Relationships: Hwang Minhyun/Kang Dongho | Baekho
Comments: 7
Kudos: 18





	that glimmer of hope (you shut it down)

**Author's Note:**

> no notes just minbaek feels going off bcs i am a mess and not feeling well so here we goooooo

-

It’s another one of those nights, the kind that Minhyun knows he’s going to regret later when they wake up. There will be no “good morning”, no sweet kisses, just quietly sipping their bitter drinks and making pointless conversation at the dented dining table in the windowless corner of Dongho’s home before they both have to leave.

The apartment is smaller than Minhyun’s walk-in wardrobe; a studio above a restaurant and across the street from a nightclub. It’s cheap, walls that shudder with the lightest of footsteps and two tiny windows that serve as reminders that even the dirty outside world is less bleak than this hovel. It stinks of second-hand kitchen grease and is crammed with mismatched furniture mostly picked up from the curb. “There’s a reason it’s out here and not in someone’s house, Dongho.” Minhyun would hiss as the other would try to convince him to help grab the other side of the plastic table. “I’m not touching that.”

“Because you don’t know where it’s been?” Dongho sneers with a playful smirk.

“Because I know exactly where it’s been and where it’s going isn’t much better.” He corrects, trailing after the shorter man and keeping his arms crossed against his chest.

Dongho doesn’t need his help to carry these curbside rejects anyway; the other’s considerably smaller than him but is all compacted muscle. A mini protodiesel is still a powerful engine, Minhyun likes to say, and he should know because he’s had a lot of experience seeing Dongho’s strength over the years that they’ve been friends.

He’s also seen a lot of his best friend’s weaknesses.

So far, Minhyun can’t decide which he likes better.

There’s strength in wanting to move out here into the shitty part of Neo-Seoul, and kick off your shoes in the entryway to a studio that’s as crammed with scavenged furnishings as a student’s brain with last minute facts before a big exam.

“Why not just take their money?” Minhyun’s heard the answer a hundred times. Dongho used to get angry when he asked, claw his hands into fists and talk about the principle of the matter, that they couldn’t get away with what they’d done, that he’d never accept anything from people who profited off the misery of others.

“Even if they’re your parents?”

“Even if they were you.” Dongho would glare, then let Minhyun change the subject.

Nowadays, Minhyun doesn’t bother asking about them. Not that he needs to. He sees the Kangs when social functions bring the elite together. He greets them politely under glittering chandeliers and reassures them with a champagne flute full of sparkling water in hand that yes, he’s seen their son, no, he’s not dying in some festering hole in the slums. 

He doesn’t tell them that Dongho wouldn’t let him pay for the medical bill after that sheet metal unit only sawed through his flesh and not his bone. That he wouldn’t quit and laughed in Minhyun’s face when he said he’d sue the factory, _‘I’d like to see that._ ’ Dongho’s teeth were as sharp as his barking laughter when Minhyun looked at him blankly, _‘ ‘HwangCorp Heir sues own company for faulty recycling equipment.’ That’d be a big one, they’d probably close down the only good thing your family does for Korea._ ’. How small he’d looked in the hospital bed in nothing but a cloth gown and his bandaged hand held by Minhyun’s sterilised gloved one.

No, they don’t need to know because if the Kangs wanted to know, they’d know. 

“Don’t worry,” Minhyun flashes them smiles instead, “I’m keeping an eye on him.”

“Thank you, Minhyun. He’s so lucky to have a friend like you.” The Kangs shake his hand, praise his manners and his kindness to his parents, and then Minhyun can excuse himself into the company of his friends while the fossils talk business.

Business is always good for Minhyun. It isn’t the money’s fault on where it came from, and it was hardly to blame when a few thousand people got terminal after the mines were opened and the rivers next to the processing plants had to be treated when the media found out. 

Money is blameless; it’s just numbers on a screen or sheafs of paper lining a wallet, and Minhyun’s always thought it was better to have the big numbers and the thick sheafs than to have principles that could only afford an apartment with exposed pipes running along the walls and barely enough floor space to cram in a tiny double bed and a chest of drawers.

Trying to explain that to Dongho however, isn’t worth the purified air his best friend cracks out of the bottle for him during his bi-weekly visits.

He sucks it in now between gritted teeth – _Ibiza Sunset_ , Minhyun recognizes it, the heady richness of sea salt and rum spiced with lime and a hint of basil lacing his tongue. It reminds him of the trip they’d taken there four years ago, all eighteen of them on Jonghyun’s jet, excited to get out and enjoy the tropics after another successful financial year for all of their parents. He’s still got photos from that trip, posts a few on his insta when the mood takes him. 

Dongho had been more interested in sightseeing and visiting the beach than he had been the clubs. He and Minhyun had waved off the others each day at the hotel and wandered on their own until sand chafed their toes red raw and the sun had burnt their ears so badly that when Dongho looked at him with a soft smile and stammered, ‘I love you’, Minhyun’s blush matched the rest of him.

He doesn’t say things like that anymore.

The closest Minhyun can get out of him now is what hiccups out of parted lips to the yellowing walls and porthole windows over the bedhead.

“Minhyun-ah, t-there, yes! Right- nh- there, god- _fuck_ ,” Dongho’s every curve of every muscle desperately strains against his own skin as he bucks into Minhyun’s touch.

He’s beautiful on his knees and Minhyun loves the view. He savours the stripe of Dongho’s spine arching as though manipulated by the faint pressure of the thumbs holding Dongho’s hips steady, when really he’s the one throwing his ass back onto Minhyun’s cock with rigorous determination. It’s rough, each vicious impale. Over the honks of driverless cars on the road outside and the sizzling stoves downstairs, there’s slap of skin against skin clapping in the tiny room.

He focuses on that sound, of the need Dongho speaks of through his quivers and sighs. Minhyun moans when the velvety heat of him clenches so tight that five hundred thousand won worth of _Ibiza Sunset_ flows out of his sensitive lungs in a single, gasping breath.

Air that Dongho had worked himself into this too-thin, hardened stranger for.

“More- god, you’re-“ Dongho’s head hangs low, sweat dripping down his nape and over his shoulders.

His black hair sways in time with the rocking of his hips. In front of him, the twin soulless windows are rimmed with the faint reflection of the nightclub’s _‘Open’_ sign. Minhyun doesn’t worry about anyone being able to see them like he had the first time they’d fucked here. The smog outside is so thick at this hour he’d be lucky to make out his own hand in front of him. Besides, he wouldn’t have been ashamed if someone could see, because he knows he looks good wherever he goes and whatever he does – Dongho included. 

And Dongho, god his best friend looks so different to the young man that confessed to him. There’s ink on him now, cursive dancing across his collarbone like a fragmented onyx necklace, a compass above his heart, and smothered by the sheets is a watercolour galaxy bleeding violet over the jagged inside of his wrist. Marks Minhyun can’t see from his current position, but he knows they’re there. He leaves some of his own on Dongho too; moons made from nails and lips searing burning red stars between his shoulders. 

“Nnh, Dongho-” His nerves are vibrating, tingling to the tips of his fingers, his nose, his ears, with the electric crackle of pleasure. Minhyun wants to surge forward into Dongho’s awaiting body. Immerse himself in sensation until there’s nothing but this man and this shitty bed and no big numbers or sheafs of blood money can fit between them and pry them apart.

The front of his pale thighs stick against the back of Dongho’s as he holds position. Keeps Dongho’s hips still while he catches his breath. Minhyun’s knees dig into bed edge, sweat and lubricant that would disgust him, except with Dongho it’s agonising, the wetness so much more giving now, so much more willing to accommodate the stretch of his cock the second time tonight. 

It’s Dongho that he wants softer for him. 

It’s Dongho who leans forward onto his wrists and then attempts to ram his hips down on Minhyun’s pelvis. 

“-wait, slow-!” Minhyun hisses. 

Dongho’s bucking under him, round buttocks clenching. Together, they’re a blur of flesh and heat and memories Minhyun wants to grip tighter, only the dips of Dongho’s waist slip away from him.

Forward, Dongho leans and his forehead nearly touches a window. Close enough that each pant ghosts fog over the surface. Back, and Minhyun tries to guide the pace before he explodes into the condom, “wait, wait, Dongho-ah I can’t when you’re it’s _good_ you’re good _fuck-_ ,”

“Mnnh.” Dongho moans instead. _Squeezes_ at the word ‘good’ when Minhyun says it. He _is_ good, Minhyun thinks as he strokes tiny crescent moons over Dongho’s hipbones with his thumbs. Better than the rest of them; the only one to break away from the trappings of luxury rather than ignoring the truth.

Ignorance, the Kangs had believed, was bliss.

For twenty-five years of Dongho’s life, it had been. 

Minhyun too, but he’d learnt with his best friend that it’s not the only bliss to be found on this decaying planet. 

“ _Fuck_ , baby- hold-” Dongho doesn’t listen.

He arches his back and lifts his hips to take Minhyun’s cock deeper, shivering when the tip grazes his sweet spot. Minhyun stares down at his wide shoulders, the black stubble at his nape, the reddened curves of his spread ass eagerly bobbing as Dongho prepares to move again. 

_he’s good he’s perfect he’s too good for this._

“Baby, please-” 

Minhyun chokes, on air, a gasp, on the taste of a memory when he had realised that love was really as simple as seeing your best friend in a summer sunset, blonde hair and puffed cheeks admitting to something you’d felt was as natural as breathing. 

So natural that you didn’t even know you’d already fallen until he smiled at you.

“-turn around?” 

Dongho used to obey his every whim. ‘ _I’m hungry’, ‘give me that’, ‘let’s go here today,’ ‘you do it’_ ; if the words came from Minhyun’s lips, Dongho was ravenous for them. Kisses were the same; Dongho would pout for them, whine, steal them when their friends pretended to gag and Jonghyun and Mingi would throw balled up napkins at them from across the table. They’d just kiss louder to spite them, exaggerate the slick of their lips, fake moans that tasted of bitter coffee and sweet tea. 

Minhyun’s quieter when he coaxes, “I want to see you. Show me, Dongho.” 

Dongho grunts, fingers fisting the sheets. His strong arms tremble, hips unmoving in Minhyun’s regained grasp. Minhyun folds forward, extinguishing the starry welts on Dongho’s back with his bare chest. He rests his fingers on the sides of the other’s quivering thighs, strokes them instead of the aching cock dangling between them.

Minhyun waits until the tension in his own abdomen leaks away and he no longer feels like a mere inhalation from Dongho beneath him will bring him to orgasm. He could pull out and flip Dongho over himself - Minhyun might not have to haul plasisteel or operate heavy robotics every day, but he takes care of himself. Dongho was still smaller than him too. Each visit, it seemed Minhyun could wrap an extra inch of arm around Dongho’s waist.

How long, he wonders, until he can’t hold onto him at all.

“ _Aah_ ,” Minhyun shudders as Dongho pushes his hips away from him. Impulse has Minhyun’s cock urging him to thrust back into the heat escaping him, to fuck into Dongho’s insides and fill him. 

He doesn’t have to obey the instinct.

All the flavoured oxygen is punched out of his lungs the second Dongho jerks back, _hard,_ and shudders with his head rising, keening. 

“ _Minhyun-nn-ah_.” 

The low purr roars through Minhyun’s veins. Floods his ears with the thudding beat of blood rushing from his head to his dick. He anchors his arms around Dongho’s bent hips, another notch on the tightening belt measured by his fingertips and wrist, but he doesn’t think about it. He can’t think about anything but Dongho writhing on his hands and knees for him. Fucking down on Minhyun’s cock like it was the only thing keeping him alive.

Their voices harmonise in breathes artificially sweetened by premium air and their motions glide, meld, until Dongho is melting and Minhyun is trembling and he can hear it, the mewls, the want and _need_ in his best friend’s voice when he chants his name.

“I’m here, I’m here I’m gonna I’m clo-” Minhyun doesn’t have to warn him. Shouldn’t waste the expensive air it costs when Dongho doesn’t listen to him anymore and save him money since he won’t take any unless he’s earned it with his own two gentle hands. 

The practical part of Minhyun’s mind would tell himself that. 

Instead, he tosses practicality on the curb to keep company with broken furniture every time he steps out of his limo in his smog-proof bodysuit. Dongho would wait for him outside, dressed in his stained work coveralls and a cheap tube filter plugged up his nostrils. ‘ _You don’t have to wait for me out here,_ ’ Minhyun tells him, ‘ _you’ll get dirty..er’_ but Dongho rolls his eyes and hugs him loosely, tells him he wants to.

“Dongho, Dongho-ah I wanna-” He wants more than he can say. The broken words spurt out in hurried moans and Dongho, trembling, takes a hand off the mattress and lays it over Minhyun’s on his hips. The watercolour galaxy on the inside of Dongho’s wrist drips warmth into Minhyun’s skin. 

He can’t see it, but he knows the stars are there. He’d held Dongho’s shaking hand while an automaton’s needle stitched them perfectly into tanned skin. ‘ _You’re my universe, Minyeonnie, you know that right? I’ve loved you since forever._ ’ He can feel them, feel how Dongho had trembled in fear, trembles in anticipation. 

“I know, do it,” Dongho murmurs, turns to look at him. “Come for me, Minhyun.” 

Minhyun chases after their dying light, spots exploding behind his scrunched eyelids. His whole body shudders as he lets out a long groan, releasing all the energy, love, and pleasure from his orgasm into a plastic sheath that keeps him separated from experiencing the full ecstasy of their connexion.

When it’s over, he feels sated, exhausted. He loosely throws his larger frame around Dongho and tucks his feet in as much as he can so they’re not dangling off the edge of the small bed. 

When Dongho pulls away and doesn’t look at him, that’s when Minhyun feels empty.

-

“You coming next week?” Dongho asks, pushing a mug of synth-chamomile blend over to Minhyun’s side of the dining table. The ceramic is navigated automatically around the dints and dips, held in place until Minhyun takes it and both of them can raise their arms.

The table legs shudder, righting to their uneven tilt. 

“Mingi’s got a fundraiser on Tuesday.” Minhyun blows at the hot water before taking a sip. “Might be late.”

“Ah.” Dongho shrugs, half-nodding as he looks over to the window. 

His amber eyes are dark, as if their light is consuming the fading night to provide the gold which will cover Neo-Seoul in the approaching dawn. Minhyun wouldn’t even be surprised if Dongho had made some kind of trade for that purpose; he’s always been a giver. Always liked the early morning. “That’s ok. Thurs-”

“Dongho-” Minhyun puts his mug down, jostling the table. 

The darkness clouds with a scowl as Dongho tenses. Lips Minhyun’s half-forgotten the taste of, are now being gnawed red like they’re being ripened for a kiss he wishes he could steal. 

“No. Don’t start-”

“I’m not _starting_.” Minhyun says, “I’m offering and you know I’ve told you, the guys would love-”

The plastic feet of the chair hiss against the vinyl tiles. Dongho stalks through the path he’s made between the piles of clean clothes that can’t fit in drawers, stacks of recycled boxes full of salvaged music slates, and the few items he’d taken from home when he’d left. Minhyun’s tried to organise them before but it ends up untidy whenever he returns.

There’s only so much that can be crammed into nine square metres, and Minhyun wonders if that’s why Dongho’s been getting smaller too. To fit better in this place, among his dead-eyed colleagues who wouldn’t - don’t - know how to appreciate an amber spark if it crash landed in their factory. 

Dongho plucks out a set of grey coveralls. He throws them on the tousled bedsheets and begins to tug it on over his naked body. Minhyun watches in silence as the galaxy on Dongho’s wrist is swallowed behind braided polymer fabric, then the compass behind a yellow cistus emblem patch as the zip growls upwards to Dongho’s throat. Only the small hint of onyx lettering peeks out beyond the horizon of sagging material. Damp black hair curls away from his forehead and he runs a hand through it impatiently, pushing it back. It falls forward a second later.

“I finish _work_ at ten.” Dongho mutters, “If you want to come over after your party-.”

“Dongho.” Minhyun stands. 

The black of his sleek bodysuit oozes over the motions of his muscles, giving his longer strides a liquid grace that he doesn’t feel, not when Dongho hurriedly grabs at his tool kit and fumbles for the filter tubes to stuff into his grimy pocket. 

“Just leave. I have to get ready.” Dongho’s chin is tucked into his chest, untangling the tubes. 

“I’ll go.” Minhyun grabs for Dongho’s hands. “I’ll go, ok.”

Immediately, amber eyes snap up to glare at him. The fiddling stops. Minhyun clicks his tongue, thumbing away a smudge of grease at the curve of the filtration plug until it’s invisible to the naked eye. There’s probably still more bacteria on there than the billion citizens of this city, but Minhyun’s just relieved that Dongho doesn’t resist when he pushes their joined hands toward the yellow patch on his clothing.

Nor does he move as Minhyun tenderly nudges a stray strand of black hair from Dongho’s forehead. 

Another step closer.

Minhyun hears Dongho take in a sharp breath. They will taste like strawberry and coconut, Minhyun decides, those parted lips, like they did in Ibiza when the summer days were as vast as the ocean dotted with sailboats below the cliff edge. They would be soft, willing, shy, and full of hope.

Both of them would be. 

A calloused hand rests on Minhyun’s chest to halt his lowering lips, short thumb cradling the hexagonal crest of a yellow cistus. Minhyun’s lashes flutter. His tongue burns with the hollow flavours of fake rum and sea salt as Dongho’s focus shifts to the patch instead of his face. 

Dongho’s fingers are strong, more than enough to tear the crest right off Minhyun’s suit if he wanted to. One violent stroke to remove the only thing marking the upper class world to which Minhyun belonged. That’s all it would take. Temporarily, anyway, since Minhyun did have a spare suit in the limo.

He isn’t afraid when he presses his chest further into Dongho’s clawed fingertips.

Minhyun thinks instead of a lifetime of summer that ended when a casualty report was given to and read by the wrong Kang family member, and Dongho left their world forever. ‘ _They’re letting people die just to expand their stupid mines, Minhyun. They said it was ‘a negligible loss’ for the profits gained.’_ He’d been in tears, inconsolable. It turned to rage when Minhyun pointed out that it was only a few thousand people, _‘Dongho-ah, and it’s not like they were gonna live long out in the slums. Neo-Seoul runs on this stuff, you can’t let it worry you.’_

‘ _So because they don’t have money, their lives mean nothing to you?’_ Dongho had asked, and that was when Minhyun knew- 

they’d lost him, _he’d_ lost him.

“Dongho-ah…”

He didn’t want to lose him again, not after he’d worked so hard to get a piece of him, _them_ back.

“-Thursday.” Dongho says. Fingertips gently trace along the curve of Minhyun’s pectoral, winding down towards his breastbone. 

Trailing behind his touch, Minhyun’s heartbeat stutters. Pauses. 

Skips when Dongho looks up at him, a ghost of a familiar smile on his lips. 

“Tuesday.” Minhyun murmurs and kisses his best friend’s forehead. “Ten. I’ll pick you up.” 

“Not in your damn limo.” Dongho moves to stuff his toolbag under his armpit, voice becoming nasally as he plugs in the filter tubes. “The damn thing is so flashy and did you know how much pollution it-”

“I’ll take the bike,” Minhyun collects his helmet from the bed and cleans the mugs while Dongho turns off the air flow and the lights, “I know you love the bike-”

“The bike’s more efficient.” Dongho agrees. He waits for Minhyun’s helmet to be secure before he opens the door for him and lets him out first. 

“That’s not why you love the bike.You like to ri-” Minhyun wraps an arm around the too thin waist to try and kiss at him, laughs as Dongho thunders down the stairwell and shoves him off. 

The lightness in his chest fades when they say goodbye. It’s replaced by the dense, unsettling weight over his heart, thickened by the smog of the overdeveloped city swallowing Dongho’s form, putting him beyond Minhyun’s reach.

-

‘ _Do you ever regret it, Dongho-ah?’_ He’d asked him once, and only once over a greasy dinner they’d bought downstairs. 

‘ _I’m not hurting anyone this way.’_ Dongho had replied tersely. ‘ _And I get to support something precious to me.’_

Minhyun recognised the tone and dropped the subject, chatting instead about Aron’s new mansion and Mingi pestering him to tell him where Dongho worked. Minhyun hadn’t told anyone - it’d been fucking _hard_ to track him down after all. He’d laughed when it turned out Dongho had been hiding in his proverbial backyard: working in the only recycling plant his parents set up as a PR stunt. The work was difficult, dangerous but so far as Dongho was concerned, the only person hurt was himself, and that was a ‘negligible loss’.

It had crossed Minhyun’s mind that morning as he’d woken up and stared at the stained ceiling, the heavy weight of Dongho’s head resting comfortably on his bare chest:

what would have happened if he’d told Dongho he _was_ hurting one other person this way.

Minhyun doesn’t bother asking the question. 

He already knows the answer.

He loves Dongho’s strengths, admires his convictions, his principles, his gentle heart. 

But Minhyun probably does like his ex-boyfriend’s one weakness more. 

  
  
  
-

**Author's Note:**

> tysm for reading ;; any kudos or comment, no matter how long or comprehensible, really means the world to me.
> 
> ✦[fic twitter](https://twitter.com/3minswriting)✦


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